Tiny District Finds Bonanza Of Pupils and Funds Online

By SAM DILLON

Published: February 9, 2005

With no grocery store or gas station and a population of 77 souls, this desert village seems an unlikely home for a fast-growing public school that has enrolled students from all across Colorado.

There are just 65 students attending Branson's lone brick and mortar school, but there are an additional 1,000 enrolled in its online affiliate. And with the state paying school districts $5,600 per pupil, Branson Online has been a bonanza. Founded in 2001, it has received $15 million so far.

The school district has used the money to hire everyone in town who wants a job, including the mayor, who teaches 15 students via e-mail. It has broadcast radio commercials statewide to recruit students and built a new headquarters here. But if the school has been financially successful, its academic record is mixed, and the authorities have put the school on academic probation.

Branson Online is one of at least 100 Internet-based public schools that local educators have founded nationwide in recent years, often in partnership with private companies, and many online schools share Branson's strengths and weaknesses, experts said.

The federal Department of Education does not keep track of enrollment numbers, but in a January report the department noted the emergence of scores of online public schools and said they were experiencing ''explosive growth.''

''Cyberschools are the 800-pound gorilla of the choice movement, although vouchers and charter schools get a lot more attention,'' said William Moloney, education commissioner in Colorado, where state financing for online schools has increased almost 20-fold in five years -- to $20.2 million for 3,585 students today from $1.1 million for 166 full-time students in 2000.

Like other online schools across the nation, Branson has proved to be an attractive alternative for parents who wish to supervise their children's education at home, and for students who hold jobs or are disabled.

But the schools are beginning to draw scrutiny. As in Colorado, online schools in other states have also shown mediocre academic performance. In Florida, for instance, students at taxpayer-financed online schools run by corporate managers made slower progress last year on standardized math tests than did students at most traditional schools.

A report on online schools nationwide, issued last May by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit group based in Illinois, concluded that states should monitor the academic and other performance of Internet schools more closely. ''The rapid expansion of K-12 online learning threatens to outpace the development of appropriate state-level policies,'' it said.

Several Colorado superintendents have criticized Branson Online for enrolling their students, thereby taking money away from their districts. Others just say the quality of the education is questionable. Glenn Davis, superintendent of the Huerfano School District in Walsenburg, said that although he had lost a few students to Branson his main concern was that online schools had become magnets for low-achieving students.

''It's not a good plan for 90 percent of kids,'' Mr. Davis said. ''They don't have the discipline or the parental support to make it work, and in many cases it's become a way to drop out legally before you're 16.''

Online schools in Colorado are subject to the same regulations as the sponsoring districts, which need no special permission to found them.

State Senator Sue Windels, a Democrat who heads the Education Committee, introduced a bill last month that would tighten the monitoring of online schools. Even so, Troy Mayfield, Branson's superintendent, predicted that Branson Online would continue to grow.

''This can get as big as our imagination will let it,'' Mr. Mayfield said.

Only five years ago, Branson, which sits on an arid flatland of scrub oak and yucca 30 miles east of Interstate 25 near the New Mexico border, was dying. The Roman Catholic church had closed for lack of a priest, and the only nonranch employment was at the one-woman Post Office; the county garage, where three men kept the snowplows running; and the school, whose kindergarten to 12th grade enrollment had shrunk to 41 students.

But the superintendent at that time, J. Alan Aufderheide, a computer enthusiast and a bit of a visionary, had acquired an Internet server with federal money and used it to make computerized texts in calculus and other courses available to Branson students and teachers online. The experiment was so popular that Dr. Aufderheide proposed that the district build a K-12 curriculum and open a virtual school, assigning the town's eight teachers to work with students via telephone and e-mail.

The school board agreed, and Branson Online advertised for students on radio stations in Denver and other cities, and in newspapers and ranch magazines. One enticement was the offer of a free computer and high-speed Internet hookup for each student, which Branson finances with the state per-pupil allotment.